If your sportive isn’t until later on in the summer you can still complete this training schedule, then adapt it so that it’s 10 percent more demanding and run through it again, continuing to focus on your areas of weakness until four weeks before your event. Only then should you move on to the final four-week programme to get you at your start line ready to rock.

Avoiding Injury

When training for a sportive, you could well step up the amount of riding you do, resulting in extra stresses and strains on your body. You might also be tempted to ignore niggles because you want to stick with the programme. Don’t!

Also beware of overtraining, which is a reduction in your ability to exercise because you’re not getting the rest and recovery that you need. There are many tell-tale signs of overtraining, including:

Reduced performance

Lack of enthusiasm for riding

Susceptibility to injuries and infections

Sore muscles

Changes in your sleep patterns

Decreased heart rate during exercise

Irritability and lack of clear-headed decision-making

Difficulty holding a usually-sustainable heart rate

Lower than normal power at a given heart rate

Handling The Hills

Sportives come in many different flavours but the one constant is that they’re all hilly – some of them mountainous – so you need to be prepared for tackling the climbs.

Alter your mindset

Know your sustainable climbing pace

Experiment with cadence

Practise seated climbing

Learn to read the climbs

Relax your upper body

Using BikeRadar’s Training Plans

We’ve kept things simple by using just three different zones of training intensity in our programmes. You can make sure you’re exercising at the right level either with a heart rate monitor (HRM) or by using perceived exertion – how hard you feel you’re working.

If you use an HRM, our zones are based on your maximum heart rate (max HR). Subtracting your age from 220 will give you a theoretical max HR, but it can be inaccurate – sometimes wildly out.

Zone 1: 60-80 percent max HR (60-75 percent if you are getting back to fitness or lack stamina). This is light to moderate effort; conversation is easy and you can breathe through your nose only.

Zone 2: 80-89 percent max HR (75-85 percent if you are getting back to fitness or lack stamina). Moderate to hard effort, though it is controlled and you are not about to blow up. This is above average sportive pace: the lower end is most likely your climbing pace while you can only survive at the top end for 60-90mins.

Zone 3: Around 90 percent max HR and above (85 percent and above when lacking fitness). Very hard; breathing is laboured and lactate makes your muscles burn. Stay out of this zone in long events; use it only for short intervals or races in the build-up to a sportive.

Don’t forget BikeRadar Live is the biggest ever mass-participation cycling event to hit the UK, and will take place on the weekend of 30–31 May 2009 at Donington Park in Leicestershire.